The management of Tom's is in the hands of the staff, writers and moderators, many of whom have been around since the beginning of Tom's site. Since Tom's not only hosts a forum, but also does hands-on testing and well-published writing about the tech gear of the day, there are plenty of experts to answer questions and moderate the forum. There are a number of rules which are made clear from the outset, one of the biggest being a no tolerance policy towards piracy and hacking. The first thread of almost any forum topic (network, CPUs, graphics, etc) is dedicated to the rules:
Do...
Search the forums. Someone else may have already answered your question/discussed the topic.
Read the stickies. They answer a lot of questions, and are great reads too!
Use paragraphs, and avoid walls of text that are hard to read.
Provide details on what is going wrong, and how. Share your hardware specs and OS, when applicable.
Keep criticism constructive. Attack the idea, not the person.
Report violators to the Moderation Team by clicking "Report" above the post.
Don't...
Post in ALL CAPS or use excessive punctuation!!!
Share personal information, like your email address. Identify theft is real.
Bump posts, claim "first!"
Hijack a topic. Stick to the original conversation.
Ask for help pirating, cracking passwords, or bypassing copyright protection
As we can see, many of these rules are the same we have adopted for the class. No one likes to BE YELLED AT ALL THE TIME. People's feelings are to be respected, and manners are appreciated.
Do...
Don't...
As we can see, many of these rules are the same we have adopted for the class. No one likes to BE YELLED AT ALL THE TIME. People's feelings are to be respected, and manners are appreciated.